1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a payment system, and more particularly, to a secure prepayment system for portable communication units that operate based upon discrete allocable blocks of service time.
2. Background Art
The advent of portable communications devices, including cellular telephones and other hand-held computing devices with wireless capabilities, has vastly increased over the last few years. It is currently estimated that there are over sixty million Americans owning and operating cellular telephones. However, because of the inherent mobility of portable communications devices, it is easy for them to be stolen. Theft of a portable communication service, particularly cellular telephone service, represents a major problem to the telecommunication industry. If a user can establish that service was unauthorized, the service provider loses revenue for the unauthorized service.
It is also easy for cellular telephones, as with regular telephones, to be used beyond the credit capacity of their owners. For this reason, most providers of cellular service require users to have a good credit history in order to obtain services.
Cellular telephone service providers therefore exclude as potential clients a potentially large segment of the population rather than assume a risk of loss, either due to theft or overuse.